The Lost Boy
by PadfootIsMyHomeDawg
Summary: Companion piece to my full-length fic, Parsel. The teenagers from the forest wake up to find the little boy gone - but Tracey in particular won't give up trying to find him, even a year later - even when others insist it's hopeless.


**Since I just posted the chapter where the teenagers came back, everyone now knows that they were indeed relevant and will care more about this oneshot I wrote a couple of weeks ago. So, I decided to post it. :) Hope you enjoy!**

 **…**

Tracey awoke with a yawn, rolling onto her back in the sleeping bag and stretching as far as she could, awakening her muscles. After a few seconds of relaxing again, she remembered the events of the night before around the campfire and opened her eyes, wondering if the kid was awake yet. She turned her head and –

No one was there.

Immediately she was wide awake, sitting up and putting out her hand on the blanket. It was chilled, with not the slightest bit of warmth to indicate anyone had slept there. Devon's jacket was still there also, which meant the kid had either gone to the boys' tent and got different clothes, or he was walking around in nothing but a pair of socks.

Actually – no. Where the boy's feet would have been when he lied down was the pair of socks he had been wearing the night before. In fact, with the position of the coat in relation to the socks, she would have thought he had spontaneously vanished, leaving the clothes behind – if she didn't know any better, that is.

 _Maybe he's gone off to relieve himself,_ she thought, head spinning. _But then why has he clearly been gone so long? He wouldn't have gone too far and gotten lost – he clearly didn't care about being naked in front of all of us, so he wouldn't need to find a spot far enough away. Did he leave on purpose?_

She worked herself quickly out of her sleeping bag and then leaned over to shake Olivia awake.

"Olivia!" she said urgently, while her best friend mumbled and swatted blindly at her hands. "Olivia, _wake up_! The kid is gone!"

"Wha…?" Olivia sat up halfway, propping herself tiredly on her forearm and blinking blearily in Tracey's direction.

"I don't think he slept here last night," Tracey babbled a bit, like she always did when she got nervous. "His blanket's all cold, and the jacket and socks are still here – and _oh_ , what if he froze to death?"

Olivia awakened much more quickly than usual due to the panic she heard in her friend's voice. She sat up all the way and pushed her hair out of her face.

"Trace, I'm sure he's fine," she said. "Let's just get on our shoes and go out – maybe he went to the boys' tent?"

Tracey followed her direction, mind still racing, and pulled on a hoodie to protect herself from the morning chill, not bothering with changing out of her pajamas. She practically tore the zipper when she tried opening it rather roughly, and eventually stumbled her way out, Olivia right behind her.

They looked quickly all around outside first, and not finding the boy there, continued on their way to the boy's tent on the other side of the campfire site.

Unzipping the tent, Olivia poked her head in, finding them all asleep and not caring they'd receive a rude awakening (she had too, after all).

"Hey, guys!" she said rather loudly to wake them all up. "The kid's not in our tent! Have any of you seen him since we went to sleep last night?"

There were some groans from three of the boys, but Keith's head popped right up. He'd always been a light sleeper, so it was easier for him to quickly wake up than the others.

"I didn't hear anything," he told them. "Been rather quiet. Was his coat still there?"

" _Yes!_ " Tracey said slightly hysterically, barging her way into the tent and almost falling over Ryan's feet. "And his socks, and it doesn't look like he even slept there last night!"

That woke up all of the boys, and Devon and Keith sat up fully while Ryan and Xavier propped themselves up on their forearms.

"You sure he didn't just have to take a leak?" Xavier said, smacking his lips tiredly.

"His blanket is cold, and so is the jacket – even the inside!" Tracey exclaimed.

"Alright, no reason to panic," Devon said, working himself out of his sleeping bag and grabbing his shirt from beside the bag. Pulling it on, he said, "We can search in the immediate area, see if we can find him – or at least clues to where he might have gone – and if that doesn't work we can drive back into town and call the police. Sound good?"

They all nodded, Tracey much calmer after Devon showed none of the panic she was feeling.

They quickly got dressed and stepped out into the sunshine peeking through the trees, and decided to split off in pairs to look for the kid. Tracey immediately attached herself to her brother, while Ryan went with Olivia and Xavier went with Keith.

Two hours later, even Devon was worried, and Tracey in response was no longer as calm either. She didn't know what had happened to the little boy, but she somehow felt like it was her fault. She had been sleeping right next to him after all, and she was a lighter sleeper than Olivia, so she _should've_ heard him if he'd left. She hadn't even heard the zipper open and close, and the size of the metal teeth should've made it fairly loud. But in the time it really mattered, she had been completely oblivious, and now the boy might be hurt or _dead_ and she didn't think she could handle that.

…

It was approaching Autumn again, and their yearly camping trip. Over the past month or so, all Tracey could think about was the missing little boy in that forest.

They had gone to the police as soon as they were able. A search party went out, looking for a naked little boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, with tangled black hair that fell past his shoulders, green eyes so vibrant you could notice from several feet away, and the most identifying feature of all – a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead. When that party was unsuccessful, another one went out. They even got volunteers from some of the towns closest to the forest, and went on the nightly news for about a week.

But they never found even a trace of the boy, and the police eventually chalked it up as some stupid teenagers playing a prank. They'd been reprimanded and even had to do community service hours to make up for the "prank", but Tracey didn't care. She cared more that they'd stopped looking, because now she was sure he would never be found.

But now she had to find out, had to be sure. She'd been up there once after that trip, while the search parties were still there, but she hadn't been back since and it was eating away at her.

So when Olivia asked her if she was _sure_ she wanted to go camping in the same place again this year, Tracey's emphatic _yes_ was expressed without an instant of thought, let alone doubt.

"It's just…there were search parties," Olivia reminded her, trying to be mindful of her best friend's feelings. "And he wasn't found. What makes you think that the six of us might be able to find him _now_?"

"Maybe he'll happen by the same area," Tracey said, trying to keep the obvious hope out of her voice. "He might recognize us, and – we have to be sure to bring _lots_ of sausages. He liked those a lot."

"Just don't be too disappointed if we don't find him this trip," Olivia said with a sigh. "It's been almost a year. He might even be in a different forest now, if he just walked there."

 _Except that he couldn't walk,_ the thought went through her head out of the blue, and she suddenly stilled. _Right? He could hardly even stand. The first time I picked him up he fell over, and then Devon had to carry him over to sit next to him by the fire. Hell, he could hardly even sit up – he about fell over when Devon helped him with the socks._

She had gone over that night so many times in her head since then – she didn't understand how she hadn't thought of this one thing that made no sense. If he couldn't walk, how did he get so far away that no one was able to find him?

There were so many scenarios that she had thought of over the past year that had physically sickened her, but now _more_ ideas spun through her head that were somehow even worse.

"We _need_ to go back," Tracey finally insisted. "There's more to his story – he can't have just _disappeared_."

Olivia thought that she meant the boy's story wasn't over – that he was still alive and could still be helped. Tracey knew that, but she didn't correct her. There was more that happened that night, and she was going to find out what it was if it took years.

Two years later, she found out exactly how right she had been, when she saw the headline about Harry Potter, who had a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt.

 **…**

 **Well, that wraps that up. I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading!**


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